Pretty much all I see are positive news reports on how the Ukrainian army is holding the neo-Soviet army in place,while defeating them and decimating their ranks.
Being a bit of a pessimist,I find it hard to believe that the Neo-Soviets aren't winning SOME battles somewhere.
What is the truth of this? Does anyone really know?
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When both sides agree on the same set of facts, it's pretty safe to assume that that is correct. So....
Russia has been trying to take Bakhmut, a city of about 70, 000 (pre-war), since last summer. Plenty of contemporaneous news reports from back then, from both Russian and Ukrainian sources, acknowledging that. Now obviously, the reports at that time didn't agree on how that battle was going, but they did agree that the battle was ongoing. The two sides also agree even now that the battle for Bakhmut is
still ongoing.
What that tells us is that Russia has been trying unsuccessfully for more than 9 months to take that single city in Luhansk. If you go back and read the reports from Russian sources from last year, they were full of predictions that the city had either almost fallen, or was about to fall. But clearly, that
still has not happened.
There are also very public reports of infighting between the commander of the Wagner PMC, and the Russian Army. So the least we can be sure of is that the focus of the Russian offensives since last July have been far less successful than the Russians themselves ever anticipated. And we know that by comparing their series of predictions/announcements over time that the city is about to fall with their own present-day acknowledgments let the city has not fallen, and that they have actually withdrawn to more defensible positions to the north and south of the city.
I don't think even the Russians themselves have claimed to have made any advancements of note on any other front. It's pretty.much been all about Bakhmut since August 1.
